Flowers on Main

Acclaim for New York Times bestelling author

Sherryl Woods

‘Sherryl Woods always delights her readers— including me!’ —No. 1 New York Times bestselling author Debbie Macomber

‘Compulsively readable … Woods’s novel easily rises

above hot-button topics to tell a universal tale of friendship’s redemptive power.’ —Publishers Weekly on Mending Fences

‘Sherryl Woods always delivers a fast, breezy … romance.’

—Jayne Ann Krentz

‘Sherryl Woods gives her characters depth, intensity,

and the right amount of humour.’ —RT Book Reviews

‘Sherryl Woods is a uniquely gifted writer whose deep

understanding of human nature is woven into every page.’ —Carla Neggers

Dear Friends,

Welcome back to Chesapeake Shores and the tightly knit, if far-flung, O’Brien family. If you read The Inn at Eagle Point, you know it’s going to take a lot to get these folks back together and there’s nothing I like more than trying to reunite a dysfunctional family.

This time you’ll get to know Bree, the middle sister, whose career as a playwright at a regional theatre in Chicago started so brightly. Now, though, she’s returned to Chesapeake Shores, her heart in tatters and her spirit wounded. But being back home among family and friends isn’t as serene as she’d been hoping, because in order to build a future she needs to confront her past.

I’m sure every woman would like to have a past as sexy, headstrong and amazing as landscaper Jake Collins, but few of us would like to deal with the kind of complications that have torn him and Bree apart. And, as if their struggles to find their way back to each other aren’t complicated enough, Bree’s mother, Megan, and her father, Mick O’Brien, are busy sorting out their own very contentious relationship under the watchful eye of everyone in the family and in Chesapeake Shores.

I hope you enjoy meeting more of the residents of this wonderful seaside community. Enjoy this visit and plan to come back again. The welcome mat is always out.

Flowers on Main

A Chesapeake Shores novel

Sherryl Woods

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Bree O’Brien sank her fingers into the rich, dark soil and lifted up a handful so she could breathe in the scent of it. This was real, not like the shallow world in which she’d been struggling to make a name for herself for the past six years. Gardening was something she understood. Plants could be coaxed along with water and fertilizer and loving attention in ways that a theater production could not. A vase of flowers, artfully arranged, had only to please the recipient, not an entire audience, each of them a critic in one way or another.

She’d been relieved when her sister Abby had called her about the opening of the Inn at Eagle Point, now owned by their sister Jess. It had given her the perfect excuse to flee Chicago, where her last play had been savaged by the critics and closed a mere week after it had opened. In six years she’d had one regional theater triumph and two box-office and critical disasters.

Some playwrights might be thrilled to have just one big success, even far, far off Broadway, but Bree had always wanted more. She’d expected to be up there with Neil Simon, Noel Coward … heck, even Arthur Miller. Of course, that had been after her first success, when she was way too full of herself. She’d thought herself capable of Simon’s comedic timing, Coward’s wit and Miller’s complex dramatic skill. There’d even been a few critics who’d shared that opinion.

That had made it all the more humbling when the second play had received only lukewarm praise and a shortened one-month run. The third had been skewered by those very same critics who’d sung her praises earlier. Her first play was suddenly being called a fluke. More than one suggested she was washed up at the age of twenty-seven.

She’d been relieved that no one in the family had been in Chicago for the play’s opening to witness her downfall or to see the reviews that had followed. She wouldn’t have been able to bear watching them struggle to be supportive. It was awful enough that everyone at the theater had been a part of the most humiliating moment of her career. None of the actors had even been able to look her in the eye as the director—her lover, for goodness’ sake—had read review after scathing review at the opening-night party before finally crumpling up the papers and tossing them in the trash.

One of these days, she supposed she’d muster up enough confidence to sit down in front of her computer and try again, but for now she was happy to be back in Chesapeake Shores, in familiar surroundings, with her family fussing over her just because they loved her and not because they knew her life was in shambles. She’d needed girl time with her sisters, a rousing game of tag football and nonstop teasing with her brother Connor and his buddies, and a chance to hug her nieces—Abby’s twin daughters.

She’d needed to be back home even more than she’d realized, back in her old room where the only writing she’d ever done was in her diary or stories and plays written for her own satisfaction and no one else’s eyes.